The Good and the Bad!
We use Ascentis HR for our "system of record", ESS, open enrollment, etc. We are just starting to learn and use Performance Management, …
Overview
What is Ascentis (discontinued)?
Ascentis HR uses web-based management programs to help automate complex HR processes. Ascentis’ other services included customizable payroll, time and attendance and recruiting modules. Ascentis was acquired by UKG in March of 2022, and will be discontinued.
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- Update personal information (151)8.686%
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What is Ascentis (discontinued)?
Ascentis HR uses web-based management programs to help automate complex HR processes. Ascentis’ other services included customizable payroll, time and attendance and recruiting modules. Ascentis was acquired by UKG in March of 2022, and will be discontinued.
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What is Rippling?
Rippling gives businesses one place to run HR, IT, and Finance. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. This enables users to manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single…
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What is Ascentis (discontinued)?
Ascentis was an a-la carte full suite workforce management (WFM) technology platform and human capital solutions. Ascentis WFM provided time and attendance solutions that provided clients with scheduling, compliance, complex calculations, and time collection options. The HCM suite, included a fully a-la carte solution.
Ascentis was acquired by UKG in March of 2022. The service will be discontinued.
Ascentis was acquired by UKG in March of 2022. The service will be discontinued.
Ascentis (discontinued) Screenshots
Ascentis (discontinued) Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Ascentis HR uses web-based management programs to help automate complex HR processes. Ascentis’ other services included customizable payroll, time and attendance and recruiting modules. Ascentis was acquired by UKG in March of 2022, and will be discontinued.
Reviewers rate Direct deposit files highest, with a score of 9.2.
The most common users of Ascentis (discontinued) are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Reviews and Ratings
(323)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(76-100 of 164)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
March 15, 2019
Payroll Genius
We use Ascentis for both our HRIS system and payroll processing. It is only used by our CFO, Controller and myself (HR Generalist). Both systems help us stay on top of all IRS rules and regulations (i.e. 1095-C forms and new tax laws).
- The ability to print our payroll checks in house. We are not at the mercy of a delivery service.
- The linking of the HRIS system to the payroll system.
- Quicker customer service.
October 27, 2018
Back to Basics: Works for Smaller Organizations
[It's] Being used by the whole organization.
We use it as our HRIS system to track and manage employee profiles (job, dept, division, location info; personal contact info; compensation info; emergency details as well as a self-serve portal).
We use it as our HRIS system to track and manage employee profiles (job, dept, division, location info; personal contact info; compensation info; emergency details as well as a self-serve portal).
- Simple UI platform
- Ability to run reports and customize reports for various purposes - Report Manager component is easy to use
- Option to view accrued time and breakdown of accrual calculations
- Some errors in reporting data (i.e. location for employee set-up as Vancouver, however, report consistently pulls it as 'Undesignated')
- Employee Manager keeps logging out.. not efficient with multiple log-ins (remote desktop separate log-in from EE Manager, Set-Up Manager, etc)
- Simple UI leaves lots of rooms for error
June 04, 2018
Ascentis HR, both good and bad
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Ascentis HR and Payroll is used throughout our organization.
- The ESS system is great to have for our employees. This takes a lot of time off of HR and provides a pretty seamless experience for my employees when making changes to their address, benefits, viewing their paystub, W2 etc.
- The new look and feel of the user TimeKeeper interface were much needed. Our system integrates with RFID card readers, which our employees love!
- Originally we had several issues with our EDI feeds, and their team was willing to step in and help set up new feeds with as many vendors as possible. Although, this should have been working when originally set up when brought to the account managers attention (A. Lisecki - who is amazing) we got on the phone with all parties to find a resolution.
- The customer service team is lacking tremendously. If you need assistance on a report or guidance in general, good luck. I will brag again on A. Lisecki
- Because she really is the reason we keep Ascentis HR/Payroll. She has gone above and beyond anytime I needed help.
- The reporting system is very cumbersome and usually provides inaccurate information. You can run the same report twice and it will give you different results. Of course, some reports are beneficial, but for the most part, it's hard to find the common HR reports quickly, such as your turnover rate, demographics, new hires etc. The system does have some of these templates built in, but there is usually a trick to getting them to work correctly.
- All the workarounds! Because we have used the system for a few years now, we know our pain points and have had to find workarounds to minimize the impact. For instance, adjusting benefit dates to ensure they roll over to payroll properly, hire date changes for ESS. At the end of the year, HSA and 401k contributions are also tricky (approving for that year but not approving the new open enrollment selections too soon- based on payroll dates).
- Open enrollment is a nightmare on the backend. Sadly, I always run a report before I submit the new information as I've had open enrollment details not push to our EDI carriers properly. At the time, I was glad I had the report otherwise my employees would have had to do open enrollment all over again.
May 29, 2018
Ascentis HR Review
We use Ascentis HR (and other Ascentis products) across our organization for all departments. It is helping us address our rapid growth.
- Customer Service - our project manager listened to our struggles and was quick to ensure that she put the right people on our team to get us through. As a company, I feel our "asks" were a little difficult at times but Ascentis helped us get through it.
- Webinars - most of their webinars are very informative and give you more knowledge of the product.
- Implementation - the process is much longer than the sales presentation layout showed. If they had ONE combined workbook for ALL aspects of the Ascentis program, not just HR, it would help speed up the implementation process.
- Manuals - Ascentis doesn't have any manuals for their systems and they are currently working on them. As a new user, it is difficult not to have any type of reference material to refer to.
May 25, 2018
Ascentis HR
Ascentis HR is being used by our entire company of 1400+ employees spread across 4 different states and 30+ different work sites. It has helped us streamline our HR administration by allowing us to reduce the amount of paperwork required from employees and supervisors to nearly zero. It also allows employees and supervisors to manage their own information electronically without needing HR assistance.
- The Customer Service for Ascentis HR is amazing. They are always quick to respond to any questions that arise and are happy to help in whatever way they are able.
- The Ascentis HR system is incredibly easy to use, even for employees who are less tech-savvy or who aren't on a computer all day.
- The report writing function in Ascentis HR has some limitations as far as what pieces of data you can pull and they can take a while to run.
May 25, 2018
Professional Software with great value
Ascentis HR is our source database for employee information across the entire company. Primary use is for employee records, performance management and source of info to sync with various internal tools.
- Ascentis seems to allow more customization than other HRIS software packages I have researched. It allows you to set up custom tabs, work flows for approvals and renaming of fields so the software can be fit to your business needs.
- Employee self service is relatively straight-forward and easy for general users to figure out.
- Has the ability to run reports on pretty much anything. We use to create lists and cross-check data on a regular basis.
- User interface on back-end could really use some work. Unable to resize or tile windows to fit the user's preference.
- On back-end, it is way too easy to delete or change something on accident. Has some quirks that you just need to know when entering information.
- Very strange tendencies to allow customization of some things, but then not allow others. For example, recruiting software requires help from Ascentis support to delete an email template. UI for self service offers limited choice of fields for some tabs.
- Employee self service and manager self service function is just okay. There is no way for managers to create data-driven widgets or access any data from the system.
May 21, 2018
Ascentis HR Review
Ascentis HR is being used by our entire company. We use HRIS, Recruiting, Payroll, ESS, ACA Reporting and have recently started implementation of Performance Management and Compensation. Additionally, we will roll-out Training and Succession Planning. One key feature for us is the ESS platform. We have employees in 23 states and ESS allows for a succinct on-boarding and open enrollment experience.
- HRIS
- Benefits Administration
- ACA 1095 processing
- ESS (excluding the widget tool - that is difficult)
- ESS Widgets - the widgets are a great tool but are so cumbersome to build I find we use them less and less
- In our past we used the time system and it wasn't really robust enough for our needs
May 15, 2018
ASCENTIS - HR and Payroll life saver!
We have several facilities with HR and payroll needs. Our former program limited the use between the facility and our corporate office and continually went down due to the amount of data we were pushing thru it. With Ascentis the support staff at their location not only made the transition from our old program to the new (Ascentis HR/Payroll) easy but very efficient as well. The support staff usually have answers and "fixes" immediately and if it's not immediate it's always within the day. With more training in the reporting programs in both HR and payroll, ad-hoc reporting has been amazing!
- Reporting requirements are easier met thru both HR and Payroll reports
- HR feeds the payroll system all changes immediately and very smooth (rarely is a change missed and never on the system side)
- There are ZERO duplicated social security number issues using HR!
- Keeping the history of employees thru the HR system is very easy!
- Would love to see a report generator that can pull the history for employee rehires and terminations along with the dates.
- Easier understanding of how to create a report even with using the report wizard. Maybe more training suggestions.
- A benefits only status date (rather than having to use the ones in the employment screen.
May 15, 2018
Ascentis HR Review
- Used by our HR department to feed payroll.
- Used by accounting to run reports.
- Allows us to keep all employee info in one area--improves efficiency
- Allows for dual authorization--HR inputs data and the Payroll department reviews
- User-friendly
- HR sends changes over to Payroll. You have to approve items for the same employee in the order received or the system breaks--would be good to have the system recognize timing.
May 15, 2018
Decent Program
We are using HR Ascentis for our HRIS system. At this time, we have our training, operations, and employee outreach departments accessing the program to utilize its reporting features for up to date employee lists and job locations.
It allows other departments to pull this information at any time. The hiccup is sometimes after an Ascentis update, the employee's information may look correct, but once we start trying to pull reports the information will end up jumbled up. When we address with Ascentis, we don't sometimes get a direct answer on why it happened.
It allows other departments to pull this information at any time. The hiccup is sometimes after an Ascentis update, the employee's information may look correct, but once we start trying to pull reports the information will end up jumbled up. When we address with Ascentis, we don't sometimes get a direct answer on why it happened.
- Information at your finger tips
- Available to integrate into other programs
- Zooming in isn't an option, it's very difficult to use a large computer screen with HR Ascentis. The program will still be very small.
- Some reports aren't available for us to pull to do information audits and when we bring this up to support, we have to end up paying for the "extra features"
May 11, 2018
Great for a growing company
Russell is using Ascentis HR for recruiting, onboarding, benefits enrollment, compensation, employee reviews, ACA reporting, and other government reporting.
Our company has 100 non-union employees and 70 union employees. All non-union employees use the self-service portal to sign up for benefits or enter personal info. The union employees do not receive benefits from us, therefore we did not add them to self-service.
Ascentis eliminates many spreadsheets and centralizes employee data.
Our company has 100 non-union employees and 70 union employees. All non-union employees use the self-service portal to sign up for benefits or enter personal info. The union employees do not receive benefits from us, therefore we did not add them to self-service.
Ascentis eliminates many spreadsheets and centralizes employee data.
- The benefits open enrollment worked great for us. Employees are able to see all the different options, compare plans, and calculate their monthly premiums as they sign up.
- The self service portal uses widgets that can be customized. We are able to keep employee updated with any changes.
- The report wizard is easy to use. We are able to create reports for any business question.
- Moving from one employee to another in the Employee Manager is a bit cumbersome.
- Moving from remote desktop to a web-based entry point would be nice.
- It would be nice to have all employee info in one place.
May 07, 2018
A User-Friendly Product
I am new to the company and use it for onboarding new hires and any changes, terminations during the course of an employee's tenure with the company. I have managed an Open Enrollment process using Ascentis and run reports for ACA, EEO-1 purposes as well.
- Ascentis provides well-designed webinars that highlight key, critical information in order to fully utilize the software.
- The HR Support line is very helpful. The representatives are well-trained and have excellent customer service skills.
- The software itself is user-friendly and, in general, intuitive.
- Although the training provided is well-designed, all of it is webinar-based. A few remote classes with a "live" instructor would be helpful for those of us that are fairly efficient online, however, still appreciate interaction with a human.
- When Ascentis is trying to assist with selling additional features to an existing client, a more high-touch, less aggressive approach is appreciated.
- I have had some issues with different passwords for different features. Sometimes confusing.
May 07, 2018
Ascentis - Life saver!
Ascentis HR is being used by our Human Resources and payroll department. It addresses:
1.) Ease of access to employee information
2.) Accurate employee information
3.) Benefit management
4.)Reporting capability
5.) Tracking employee documents for compliance.
1.) Ease of access to employee information
2.) Accurate employee information
3.) Benefit management
4.)Reporting capability
5.) Tracking employee documents for compliance.
- A clean system that is easy to navigate through and change information
- Ability to grow into the system and customize to our company's tracking needs and changes
- Robust system that holds a tremendous amount of critical information in one place
- An ability to automatically notify our employees through email/text and banner in ESS for expired or expiring employee documents
- Ability to track variable hour employees for ACA requirements in a more inclusive way. Some way for the system to hold hours worked, during specific periods of time and notifying employees automatically when they are eligible for benefits due to meeting the hour and measurement period requirements.
We use Ascentis HR for our entire organization of around 50 employees. We use it as our electronic HR file which holds employee elections such as benefits enrollment and waivers, w-4 elections, etc. We also store employee documents such as employment agreements, evaluations, and check-ins, or other documentation that is determined to be added to their file. Employees access their files through the Employee Self-service site which allows them to see pay stubs, request time off, update personal information, etc. Supervisors also have access to certain aspects of their direct reports file, such as approving time off and seeing past performance evaluations. This is also where we house internal documents (e.g. employee handbook, benefits information, etc.) so employees can refer there to find them.
- As an employee, having access to my personnel file at any time is great. If there is an update to be made employees can make it themselves rather than fill out some update form, submit, and wait for it to get updated.
- There is a link between our payroll system and Ascentis HR which almost seamlessly connects the two. If an employee updates their direct deposit information our payroll software knows. As administrators, we have to approve any changes, but the employee initiates. So, when the direct deposit comes back as undelivered due to the wrong account, the only person there is to blame is the employee themselves who put in the wrong information.
- The payroll simulator is a great planning tool. It helps employees to get an idea of what the impact of different changes would have on their net check. Examples include: receiving a raise, changing your retirement election percentages, changing from a traditional 401k to a Roth, changing your exemptions, etc.
- There is a fair amount of learning and set-up when getting the system but once it's set up it's easy to run and maintain.
- For administrators, the Employee Manager application can be a little difficult to use at times. Trying to find where a field is, or what particular field is that needs updated (there are a couple different attachment areas with different purposes, but not initially clear what's what)
- For administrators, the report running functionality is pretty good but it can be a bit clunky, and the export doesn't always come across in a useable format. Sometimes it's is a clunky text file, others in excel CSV file that's hard to format. There are several 'wizard' steps to go through to run reports and lots of options as you walk through the steps. It means you can really customize your report, but it also means that it can take you many many tries and time to get the report you are wanting. The good thing is though you can save your wizard settings if you will be rerunning the report.
- For administrators, we have to access the management functions through a remote desktop. Sometimes that connection is slow or has issues. Also, it adds an added step when trying to upload documents to employee files, download report exports, or you just want to open a web browser to look something up while you are in there (there are very few pages you can navigate to). It would be nice if the application was web-based without opening a remote desktop.
May 02, 2018
Ascentis review
As a broker, Ascentis is used as a solution to our clients/prospects needs. We will refer groups to Ascentis as a way to build a relationship and protect accounts. Some brokers refer and some don't, it depends on the individual.
- The ability to customize the platform to clients. Not every company is the same and this really helps clients feel taken care of.
- Professional webinars. One of my clients had high praise for the webinars provided by Ascentis and described them as her favorite source of webinar instruction.
- Implementation seemed to take longer than actually needed. My first client with Ascentis was annoyed with the first welcome call that took an hour out of her busy schedule that ultimately had no real need for her to be on the call. She thought she could've been sent an email explaining what the process would be.
May 01, 2018
Overall a great product
It is used across the organization HRIS, Performance Mgmt, Employee Self Service, Recruiting ATS, Onboarding.
- Recruiting ATS works very well
- Onboarding is awesome
- HR database
- All three are easy to use.
- I would like to see the core HR function house address history.
- The performance management system runs slow almost all the time. Needs to be faster.
- Wish offer letters for onboarding had a little more room for customization.
May 01, 2018
Ascentis - The efficient Tool
Currently, Ascentis is being used by the entire organization. This is the payroll/expense tool used by every exempt/nonexempt teammate. Keeps track of payroll and PTO as well as timesheets for work hours/schedules.
- The great functionality of Timesheets and keeping track of PTO balances and forecasts
- Tracking teammates occurrences and call outs are what we utilize as well
- Expense reports/submitting and approving is very efficient in Ascentis, very user-friendly
- Loading - it's not an internet bandwidth issue, it's the application when you first log in
- The dashboard is very busy when you first log in, maybe a simpler version
- The color scheme can be more vibrant
May 01, 2018
New to Ascentis
We use Ascentis as our HRIS, Timekeeping, and Payroll.
- Our Project Manager was particularly helpful with implementation. She checked in weekly and was quick to respond when we needed additional help.
- We appreciate the ease of report writing and the simplicity of the HR side.
- We like having carrier connections available for our benefits enrollment.
- Timekeeping is actually a separate platform and is clunky compared to the Ascentis side. We really wish the timekeeping piece was under the Ascentis umbrella.
- Novatime is not user-friendly and, unfortunately, that is the part that employees and managers have to use.
Ascentis was sold to us as a Cloud-Based, OFCCP compliant HCM system. It is neither. It solves no business problems in its current state.
- It has performed well in producing 1094s and 1095s
- The onboarding feature is good - not great - just good
- Needs to be cloud-based NOW
- Ascentis needs to develop their own products instead of cobbling different products together and telling people they developed them
- Lose the words "hard coded" from your vocabulary
May 01, 2018
HR & Employee Satisfaction with HRIS!
We are using Ascentis HR as our HR system of record. We use employee self-service, benefits administration - including carrier interface, payroll interface, and employee reporting. We are in the process of implementing the performance management, recruiting and performance and learning modules.
- We received rave reviews from employees with our first benefits open enrollment. Using Ascentis all employees were able to complete the process themselves online, as opposed to in our old system the previous year only about 20% of employees were able to complete their enrollment without our assistance. Also new employees are able to complete enrollment on their own with minimal or no instruction.
- Benefit enrollments now flow directly to the carrier. This is a significant time savings as previously enrollments were done manually on each of our multiple benefit vendor sites.
- Our first ACA reporting using the new system was a success. The ability to do this reporting in Ascentis allowed us to eliminate a separate vendor thus saving money for the institution going forward.
- More targeted and flexible reporting allows us to obtain just the information we need at a given point in time.
- The file export to payroll is a much smoother and faster transfer process.
- We are still using remote desktop log in. Having to log in a minimum of three times before we get to employee data is time consuming and annoying.
- While the reporting feature allows access to all employee data, it takes some time to go through all the questions needed to create a report. It would be helpful to have some pre-set up reports using standard employee parameters.
- We would like to see more functionality to capture multiple jobs for an employee. We had to customize those fields, then those fields were not included in standard reports so we had to get customized reports created for us.
- More flexibility for us to run custom reports when we want to run them instead of having a schedule or putting in a request with support to run the reports for us.
April 30, 2018
Ascentis HR Review
We currently use Ascentis for all HR related transactions such as recruitment, onboarding, benefits, ACA compliance, and reporting. It is mainly used by HR and recruitment. It addresses all business problems across HR and recruitment.
- The Ascentis Recruitment ATS is really good. It is web based and it is easy to work with.
- The Employee Self Service is also a good feature that is offered by Ascentis. It is easy to access and very user-friendly.
- The onboarding feature is an excellent resource to have. It streamlines the onboarding process and it makes it easy for new hires to complete their paperwork ahead of time and it helps with keeping the completion of forms paperless.
- The biggest drawback for me is the HRIS side of the house. It is not web based making it very difficult to access it over the web at any time from any where. The whole HRIS side needs to be completely redone so better easy and functionality. Make it web based and a lot easier to use. I really did not fully understand how the HRIS side of the house worked before purchasing a three year agreement with Ascentis. If I had known that the HRIS side was desktop based, I probably would not have signed up with Ascentis.
- Reports in the HRIS could be greatly improved. It Is not easy to pull reports from the system. There are so many steps you have to complete in order to get the report needed.
- The benefits setup wizard through the Ascentis HRIS is very difficult and a tedious process. There are a gain lots of steps to take in order for a benefit to be placed properly.
April 24, 2018
Ascentis - Take it or Leave it
Ascentis HR is our ESS for benefits. It also utilizes carrier connections to link employee benefit elections directly to individual carriers.
- ACA reporting is incredibly easy with Ascentis HR.
- It is somewhat user-friendly for employees to make updates to their elections.
- Ascentis HR is very versatile at selecting different types of reports.
- It's a bit cumbersome to set up the back end.
- You don't have a lot of control over certain aspects of the system. For example, if you want your FSA to pro-rate monthly charges, you have to contact support to create a special drop-down menu. There are other defaults such as adding coverage where Ascentis may default to the beginning of the next month versus the date of the event.
- Carrier connections aren't always reliable.
April 24, 2018
Not Up to Snuff
Primarily in Human Resources, with some overlap in Payroll. I pull reports.
- The data is secure.
- The platform is old with cumbersome login
- Not a true integration with Payroll or ERP, need to maintain separate lists
- Clunky and hard to use
April 20, 2018
Good product for small to mid-size company
Ascentis is used within HR/Payroll for the new hire through separation life cycle. The entire organization uses the add-on timekeeping module and employee self-service module.
HR is in the planning phase to implement the recruiting module.
- Offers monthly training webinars on HR and payroll topics in addition to training on their software.
- Great ACA support
- Responsive payroll and HR support
- System handles processing for multiple EINS well.
- Currently Module based system, the HR/Payroll team must log in to multiple modules to complete tasks and process data or record updates.
- QE benefit changes don't sync well with carrier databases.
- Benefit System does not currently have the ability to lock benefit rates at enrollment age band rate for age banded products. For example, if you enroll at age 39 and next year age banding bumps your rate up, but carrier locks rate at age 39 age rate.
- Separate reporting system in each module
April 20, 2018
Ascentis Review
We use it across the whole organization and it was a replacement to a program that did not offer much in the way of HR services. We now have a self service portal for employees to make changes and it has helped with recruiting and connects to the payroll program.
- Flows to payroll in real time
- Self service portal makes sending messages to employees easy
- The benefits usually do not flow over to payroll very well and need a lot of work
- The information that flows over to payroll can be quite a bit different from HR and it does not receive all the information
- It can take a while to get all the new hire information